Stoney deGeyter

Marketing a website isn't particularly difficult. It's usually just a matter of knowing what to do, how to do it and having the skills and time to get it done. With that said, marketing a website isn't particularly easy either. There are so many factors and variables in play that at any given time that the job can be quite overwhelming. Obviously I can't address the issue of whether or not you have the skills or time, but I can help you out with the "what to do" piece of the puzzle.

I've always been a lover of checklists, especially when it comes to getting things done. Especially when it comes to remembering what things need to be done! So over the last several years I've been putting together checklists for all kinds of things pertaining to website marketing.

Below is my master website marketing checklist covering over 400 specific items over 23 topics. These topics include things such as website development, SEO, usability, accessibility, etc. This list doesn't cover any "how tos," which are essential ingredients to successful online marketing, but sometimes you need to first know what to do so you can then discover how to do it.

For the sake of brevity, I have kept each check point to its briefest form providing very little explanation. I don't cover why any particular item is included, how important it might be, or what it even means. This is just the checklist in its rawest form.

Over the next couple of weeks I'll provide some additional explanation and insights to the lists below. And since this list is always a work in progress, any additional thoughts and insights are welcome. I'm always adding and removing things as I see fit. Which brings me to one more note: many items are included here based purely on my own preferences and by no means constitute an absolute truth or necessity.

About the Author

Stoney deGeyter is the President of Pole Position Marketing, a leading search engine optimization and marketing firm helping businesses grow since 1998. Stoney is a frequent speaker at website marketing conferences and has published hundreds of helpful SEO, SEM and small business articles.

If you'd like Stoney deGeyter to speak at your conference, seminar, workshop or provide in-house training to your team, contact him via his site or by phone at 866-685-3374.

Stoney pioneered the concept of Destination Search Engine Marketing which is the driving philosophy of how Pole Position Marketing helps clients expand their online presence and grow their businesses. Stoney is Associate Editor at Search Engine Guide and has written several SEO and SEM e-books including E-Marketing Performance; The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!; Keyword Research and Selection, Destination Search Engine Marketing, and more.

There are 400 things here, and on any given site, I might have time for 20% of them. I'd like to make sure I get the top 20%. Think of oh ySlow is structured. Sure I can add E-tags, but gziping content and reducing external JS calls is WAY more important.

@ Jacob That's a good point and I wish I had time to do that. I've been fiddling with this list for months and I still couldn't even put each point in a chronological order or order of importance for each section. Maybe someone with more time on their hand can do that for me. :)

@ Roland yes, different options are being considered. Hope to have something together by the time we head out to Small Business Marketing Unleashed.

@ Carolyn Browser hijacking is when the site you are visiting takes over. This is most frequently seen when you click a link and the browser resizes automatically. But it can also prevent you from using your right-click they way you want, etc.

@ SEO Diva I'm not a fan of hyphenated domains unless you already own the non-hyphenated version. The reason for this is because it requires a whole lot of extra effort to "brand" that hyphen into someones mind. If you tell the m the domain name verbally there is a good chance they'll forget to add the hyphen by the time they get to a computer. Now you've just driven them to a competitor!

I agree with 98%, disagree with 1%, and don't understand the rest (LOL).

@Pavel: Underscores require the use of the shift key and slows down typing considerably (most people have to shift gears to remember where the underscore is). And, of course, as Stoney mentioned, they can be forgotten just as easily as hyphens.

There is the additional problem that people often don't see the underscore (especially in a link that's presented underlined) and interpret it as a space.

I just want to say thanks to everybody who commented and enjoyed the checklist. I also hope you're enjoying the posts that have been expanding on each of these lists.

Now if I could get all of you go to up and hit the FETCH and SPHINN buttons that would be awesome!

@ Robert, we're talking about putting the list into some kind of printed format. It's already shared so you don't have to feel guilty about passing it on... but I wonder if I could still get people to pay for a nice shiny chart too! :)

On a serious note, I'd love a comprehensive checklist. The more official it looks the easier it will be to get the powers-that-be to follow them. While I'm fairly lucky with my development team sometimes the client needs a little push in the right direction too. I have a feeling the shiny chart would work well with the, "I need a website! It must do everything" crowd.

Man...makes me realize I have so much to do to improve my blog to even meet half the items on this list. Well, no time like now to start improving. Is it possible to buy site designs that already have most of the above features so that I all I need to focus on is content.

Great checklist for Webdesigners to create a well-integrated, executed and tested design. A summary for this checklist is that a website should be simple and logical to use, so users don't need to think about it.

Talking about the progress bars, I also did some research on major etailers and how do they display the bar. I wrote an article about the findings, called CHECKOUT - Progress Bar Survey. Take a look and please let me know what you think.

Hello Stoney, I have a question about the use of keywords in content. Everyone tells us that we should use a certain % of keywords to get noticed by the search engines for the terms we want to be found by. The other day I ran across a site in google generic search, position 1 on page 1. When I went to the site and did a search for the keyword I located them by, it was only found one time in all their pages. Do you think this is rare, Stoney? Let me know what you think.

I already thanked you for the work you've done here Stoney, but I can't find the post, so thanks again and great job.

@ HHO - Don't worry about the percentage of times the keyword is used. That has little relevance as there is no magic percent. If you analyze top ranking sites for different keywords you'll see that it varies. Google looks a lot of factors, even to the point where a page can rank using the keyword only one time (or even no times). Links will often play a role in this.

However, don't think that means you don't need to use your keywords at all. Just be wise about how you do it and make sure it reads naturally.

The 'site map' section appears to have the first five items from the 'privacy& security', while two kinda make sense three don't. Certainly doesn't match the description on the expanded 'site map' page. HUGE help, thanks for providing such a comprehensive resource. regards.

Posted by: Dauntless on November 27, 2008

You know Stoney, thinking about all this keyword stuff, I remember one site I put up that was an instant pr 2. It had no meta tags, no title, no links, and no thought about keywords. Now that's original...LOL..Happy Holidays Stoney

@ smonnes - Great question that I don't think I have an answer to. Most sites generally have visitors select that option before being directed to the proper home page. But you have to be careful about this and employ cloaking methods to ensure you don't screw up your SEO efforts.

Aside from that, it might be smart to include it in the global navigation, if possible.

Thank you for this amazing post. When learning from scratch and new to the game, information can be pretty sparse and take a lot of time to find. This is the most comprehensive checklist I have found yet! I will begin the process of figuring out how to make as much of it happen as possible. True value here!

What it should be called is: What are all the possible features/principles that I could have /use on my website. Maybe to make it useful to people. This has little to do with the "Marketing" of a website

Posted by: Terrible on March 5, 2009

Can anyone please recommend a training portal covering sales and marketing web seminars? My company is planning to take up training for our staff online, a different approach to the contemporary off line seminars. I would like to know whether any websites out there can help us in delivering best content and trainers on sales, marketing, time management, prospecting, etc,. and how long these web seminars lasts? what's the price they are going to charge to attend these trainings?

Can anyone please recommend a training portal covering sales and marketing web seminars?
My company is planning to take up training for our staff online, a different approach to the contemporary off line seminars. I would like to know whether any websites out there can help us in delivering best content and trainers on sales, marketing, time management, prospecting, etc,. and how long these web seminars lasts? what's the price they are going to charge to attend these trainings?

Posted by: Lovable Van contract hire on March 31, 2009

Very comprehensive guide line ... I like it very much.
Thanks for sharing.

Thanks so much for the extensive checklist. Any budding web developer should be aware of this. I am a student and have a presentation on SEO. Can I distribute your check list? It will be very useful to all my classmates!!

Thanks again!
Bhanu.

Posted by: Bhanu on May 29, 2009

I love it! Perfect list when launching a site or reviewing client sites. Thanks for the awesome list!

@ Daniel - Search engines used to treat underscores differently than hyphens, but that's not so much of an issue now. The big thing is usability. It's a bit more difficult to get someone to remember to type in a URL using underscores than hyphens, and when you are posting a URL with underscores they can often look like blank spaces. This can prevent people from remembering them properly later.

If you have a site with 1000s of pages then you are likely pulling from a database. You can craft a title tag template with a variable or two added in. That variable can be a product number, product name, manufacturer, etc. Adding variables can ensure every title tag is unique across your site.

I think its a great checklist, but don't be fooled into thinking you will get good search engine rankings without strong linking. It may be the difference between 4th and 5th, but unless you get strong links to the site, you still won't rank on the first few pages. I guess I'm say don't spend too much time getting bogged down in dotting all the i's.

Awesome list!! Thankyou - this is such a detailed and perfect list! If i had only one page to look at for inspiration it would be this one! Well done!

Posted by: Anonymous on October 24, 2009

This list has nothing to do with marketing a website. Nothing. So, ironically, you've violated your "Title reflects page info and heading" rule.

Posted by: John on November 5, 2009

John, I'm guessing you were expecting a post about active marketing OF a website not a post about how to make a website a marketing vehicle for a business. Those are not necessarily the same thing. This post is about how to use your website as a marketing tool for your business. Build a site, get it out there to the search engines and convert visitors. Now if you want to do marketing that promotes the website outside of the search engines, that's a different checklist altogether.

great list. thanks for sharing. bookmarked, link love will be provided.

Posted by: Alex on December 2, 2009

Absolutely great article (I'm sure you've heard that a couple of times already!)

One of the thing that puzzle me is there is no mention of setting online marketing objectives and measuring achievement toward them: what about adding a little section on web analytics and online measurement? :)

Stephane, excellent suggestion that I'll take into consideration for my next update. Though I primarily focused on changes one can make to site itself rather than focusing on extermal/analysis factors. A checklist on Analytics can easily be it's own 400 plus tips. I like to think of it this way, everythign in this list can be tested and tracked to see how it performs.

Posted by: Stoney deGeyter on December 2, 2009

Forget marketing guide. That should be a standard website style guide! Great job.

If you use screen capture images on your site don't hyperlink them to the page.People with small screens or visual problems can get confused not realizing they have moved to the next page while seeing the exact same thing.

Oh my! Just bumped into this. Very nice, thanks. Any chance of seeing an update for 2010? Since the series type articles seem to work well, maybe that's how you can reapproach this? With each section above being revisited as a chapter in a series. That would be handy. Thx again.

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